Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...director of Osama, one of two Cannes entries about Afghanistan, needed the right girl to play his lead. Barmak was seeking someone with whom Afghans could identify, someone who would make his audience "feel confident about themselves, to prove to them that they are human again." He combed Kabul's schools and orphanages in vain. Then came a chance street encounter. A young girl in a tattered salwar kameez approached him, begging for money. "Her eyes," says Barmak, "were like an explosion of light." Marina Golbahari had never acted before, but she didn't need to reach deep...
...only across the border that the jihadis are finding shelter and succor. The relative ease with which small Taliban units operate in its old stomping grounds these days is a reminder that the new government in Kabul has not managed to wean away some of the Taliban's core supporters - a point underscored by the fact that Mullah Omar and most of the movement's senior leadership have never been captured. Unlike the sophisticated Arab operatives of al-Qaeda for whom Afghanistan was simply another stopover in a globalized jihad, the one-eyed peasant mystic mullah is still believed...
...Taliban commanders have begun giving interviews with media organizations confidently describing a new offensive, and the audacity of the resurgent radicalism was highlighted Tuesday by the first anti-American demonstration in Kabul since the Taliban's demise - it drew some 300 students and government employees, complaining of a lack of security but also demanding that the U.S. leave and Islamic rule be restored...
...speak of: U.S. troops are currently training the nucleus of an Afghan national army, and expect to have trained some 9,000 troops by the middle of next year. But right now security even in the capital itself relies on the 4,400 mostly NATO troops deployed in Kabul in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and the 8,000 U.S. troops deployed primarily to hunt down remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and to conduct some rudimentary reconstruction...
...That leaves most of the country outside of the capital under the de facto control of a patchwork of often feuding warlords whose links to Kabul are often tenuous and many of whom have reverted to extortion, drug production and other illicit revenue streams. Even in Kabul itself, Karzai finds himself a virtual prisoner in the palace, guarded by U.S. personnel because the Northern Alliance troops of his defense minister, General Mohammed Fahim, may not be sufficiently trusted with Karzai's life. Fahim, of course, is quite happy for the affable Pashtun president in the coat of many colors...